There was a time in early 19th century Europe when chemistry was regarded not only as the dominant science of the day, but also as the most attractive and civilizing of all disciplines of “natural philosophy.” As the poet Coleridge announced with glee, as he began a private chemical course in 1801: “I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark!”

In fact for several decades chemistry came to symbolize the spirit of Science itself. It stood for pure disinterested and experimental research, combined with technological applications “for the relief of man's estate” (in the famous phrase of Sir Francis Bacon). It held out the promise of universal benefits “for all mankind.”

Previously, science had been represented by Astronomy and Newton's Principia. But in his authoritative Study of Natural Philosophy (1831) a retrospective overview of all scientific developments in every field since the mid-18th century, the great scientific polymath Sir John Herschel transferred this flag-bearing role to Chemistry.

Chemistry, wrote Herschel, had become decisively “the most popular” as well as the most “ influential” of all the sciences. “We find none which have sprung forward, during the last century, with such extraordinary vigour, and have had such influence in promoting corresponding progress in others.” It was also the most exciting. It explored a dramatic new world of “wonderful and sudden transformations,” and was the “most completely experimental” of all the sciences in its drive and ambition (Herschel, On the Study of Natural Philosophy, 1831, part 3, chap. 4, pp. 299–309).

The chemical experiments of the period 1770–1830 were indeed dazzling, and opened up the previously “secret” or “invisible” world of matter itself. These revelations included the discovery and correct naming of new gases (“artificial airs”) such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and nitrous oxide; the crucial decomposition of water—until then considered a “primary” element—into its components of oxygen and hydrogen; the isolation of new chemical elements such as sodium, potassium, chlorine, calcium, barium and magnesium; early atomic theory, and the first periodic table of chemical elements; the early investigations into the fantastic phenomena of electricity; the theories of latent heat, calorific and combustion; the wave hypothesis of light; photosynthesis; the medical uses of inhalation and vaccination (and nearly anaesthesia); and work on early spectroscopy.

The technological applications were equally impressive. Among many were the first Watts steam engine and condenser pump (based on the experiments of Black in the 1770s); the first Voltaic battery pile (1799); the first man-carrying balloons (1783); the first steam-powered ship (the Charlotte Dundas, 1801); the first gas street lighting (1807); the first electric arc lamp (1810); the first miner's safety lamp (1816); the first polarised light-house lens (1822); the first pioneer photographs using silver salts (1826); and the first “high” explosives for warfare during Napoleonic campaigns (1812). Of course the idea of a “first” in science is always highly contentious, but historians sometimes agree on roughly these dates.

But more than this, for the first time the chemists formed a truly international network across Europe. It was a living community of letter exchanges, informal visits, conference sessions, technical publications (notably the Royal Society's journal Philosophical Transactions) and of course intense personal competitiveness.

The primary figure—and the one who excited the most rivalry as well as the most admiration—was the great French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794). It was Lavoisier who finally transformed the age-old mumbo jumbo of alchemy into an exemplary empirical science, through the use of accurate observation, exquisite measurement and precise nomenclature. As Herschel observed: “The third age of chemistry—that which may be called emphatically modern chemistry … commenced (in 1786) when Lavoisier, by a series of memorable experiments, placed chemistry in the rank of the exact sciences—a science of number, weight, and measure (On the Study of Natural Philosophy, pp. 301–2)”.

But there were many others who belong to this great Chemical Moment in history. Among them were Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) in America and also later in France, along with Berthollet (1749–1822) and Gay-Lussac (1778–1850); Scheele (1742–1786) and Berzelius (1779–1848) in Scandinavia; and the great roll-call from Britain: Joseph Black, Henry Cavendish, the radical non-Conformist Joseph Priestley, Thomas Beddoes, Thomas Young, John Dalton, and William Hyde Wollaston.

But undoubtedly the most celebrated and iconic figure of this entire Chemical Age was Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), who used his chemical discoveries, his wildly popular lecture series, and his general writings on science, to turn the “Chemical Philosopher” (the term scientist not being coined until 1834) into a figure of social and cultural importance in a quite new way.

Davy is now most obviously remembered for his early work on nitrous oxide; his use of the Voltaic battery to resolve new elements such as sodium and potassium; his innovations in agricultural chemistry and tanning; his invention of the arc light (using carbon electrodes); and above all for his triumphant design of the miner's safety lamp, a brilliantly simple device (of metal gauze) that spread across the coal mines of Europe, as far as Poland and even Russia, unhindered by patent restrictions. In accessing the primary energy source of the day, it saved literally thousands of lives.

Davy was also the first Englishman knighted for service to science since Sir Isaac Newton, and the first professional chemist (as opposed to astronomer or mathematician) to be elected President of the Royal Society of London. Altogether Davy conferred hitherto unexampled popularity—and even glamour—on the discipline of chemistry.

His impact as a lecturer at the Royal Institution and the Royal Society is celebrated. An eyewitness, Thomas Dibdin, conveyed the theatrical atmosphere, as Davy exuberantly revealed the new alkali metals during his Bakerian lectures of 1806–8:
The whole had the character of a noonday opera house. There stood Davy, every Saturday morning, as the mighty magician of nature—as one, to whom the hidden properties of the earth were developed by some Egerian priestess in her secret recess. Begirt by his immense voltaic battery—which was as so many huge cubical links of wood and metal, forming a vast mysterious chain, and giving to the whole a sort of picturesque and marvellous character–the lecturer called forth its powers with an air of authority, and in a tone of confident success. The hardest metals melted like wax beneath its operation. … The tremendous force of such an agency struck the learned with delight, and the unlearned with mingled rapture and astonishment; and the theatre or lecture-room rung with applause as “the mighty master” made his retreating obeisance. (Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life, 1836, p. 226)

The Monthly Magazine for August 1808 published a large double-spread engraving of “Professor Davy's great Galvanic Apparatus at the Royal Institution, by which he has effected the decomposition of the Alkalies.” Davy's voltaic battery was evidently a formidable instrument. Mounted in a long trough on metal legs, it was constructed of five hundred copper and zinc plates in interconnecting compartments filled with sulphuric acid. Nearby on a work table is a small dull lump of potash waiting for decomposition and chemical “transformation” into a gleaming, volatile globule of potassium. The appearance of this dramatic engraving in a general periodical vividly suggests the public fascination with Davy's discoveries. Here is massive and revolutionary technical power in the hands of a scientific master.

These aspects of Davy's fame are well known to scientific historians. But what is far less appreciated is the historical and philosophic importance of his writings. Davy's books and published lectures provided a new context for chemistry itself as a discipline, and for the social significance of science in general. He also wrote a number of incisive short essays on his chemical contemporaries, such as Cavendish, Lavoisier and Scheele.

In his wonderful paper, On the Safety Lamp for Coal Miners, with Some Researches into Flame (1818) Davy produced one of the great set pieces of Romantic science writing. He related the human predicament of the miners, threatened by terrible explosions of fire-damp, to the scientific solution found in the laboratory. He argued that applied science could be a force for good previously unparalleled in human society, and might gradually liberate mankind from untold misery and suffering. The safety lamp becomes the symbol of science's “benevolence,” and “the relief of man's estate.”

Deliberately echoing Bacon—as Lavoisier had once done—Davy claimed that scientific knowledge was disinterested power for good:
The results of these labours will, I trust, be useful to the cause of science, by proving that even the most apparently abstract philosophical truths may be connected with applications to the common wants and purposes of life. The gratification of the love of knowledge is delightful to every refined mind; but a much higher motive is offered in indulging it, when that knowledge is felt to be practical power, and when that power may be applied to lessen the miseries or increase the comforts of our fellow-creatures. (John Davy, ed., The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, 1839–40, vol. 6, p. 4; hereafter Works)

The Edinburgh Review ran a fanfare article in praise of his work, written by the leading geologist Professor John Playfair. “It may fairly be said that there is hardly in the whole compass of art or science a single invention of which one would rather wish to be the author.”

Playfair described the discovery as the result of pure inductive science, “in no degree the effect of accident,” and “as wonderful as it is important.” Its historic significance was unmistakable.
This is exactly such a case as we should choose to place before Bacon, were he to revisit the earth, in order to give him, in a small compass, an idea of the advancement which philosophy has made, since the time when he pointed out to her the route which she ought to pursue.

Here the word “philosophy” was used exclusively to mean “science” in the modern sense: what Playfair defined as “the immediate and constant appeal to experiment (Edinburgh Review, 1816, no. 51, p. 233)”.

But Davy also gave, for perhaps the first time since Bacon, a much wider social and philosophic context to the whole business and ambition of science. This appears in three visionary statements on the progressive state of chemistry in his life time, which he delivered successively over some thirty years.

The first was his “A Discourse Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry,” originally given at the Royal Institution in 1802. In this he outlined both a social history and a heroic future for science. His central concept was that of Hope. Once woken by science, man had become capable of “connecting Hope with an infinite variety of ideas.” Above all science had transformed mankind's prospects across the planet by enabling him to shape his future, imaginatively and actively.
It has bestowed on him powers which may be almost called creative; which have enabled him to modify and change the beings surrounding him, and by his experiments to interrogate nature with power, not simply as a scholar, passive and seeking only to understand her operations, but rather as a master, active with his own instruments. (Davy, Works, vol. 2, pp. 318–9).

Davy announced to his spellbound audience at the Royal Institution that they were witnessing the dawn of “a new science”:
The dim and uncertain twilight of discovery, which gave to objects false or indefinite appearances, has been succeeded by the steady light of truth, which has shown the external world in its distinct forms, and in its true relations to human powers. The composition of the atmosphere, and the properties of gases, have been ascertained; the phenomena of electricity have been developed; the lightnings have been taken from the clouds; and lastly, a new influence has been discovered, which has enabled man to produce from combinations of dead matter effects which were formerly occasioned only by animal organs. (Davy, Works, vol. 2, p. 321)

The second significant statement appears in his encyclopaedic introduction to his collected Lectures on Chemistry of 1812, entitled “The Progress of Chemistry.” Here he gave a remarkable historical overview of chemistry since the Greeks and Arabs, and outlined contemporary developments right across Europe. He claimed that Britain now lead the world in Chemistry which had become the chief experimental science of the day, including work with voltaic batteries. Davy romantically dedicated these lectures to his fiancée Jane Apreece (Davy, Works, vol. 4).

Finally, in his extraordinary last book Consolations in Travel: The Last Days of a Philosopher published in 1830, Davy gave a retrospective and even mystical view of the role of the chemist himself in society. Here he claims that chemistry is the basis for a scientific education, and the key to all future sciences. Georges Cuvier later called it “in some measure the work of a dying Plato.”

In this fifth dialogue, “The Chemical Philosopher,” Davy set out his hopes for the future of chemistry. It embodied all his passionate belief in science as a progressive force for good, both in its practical results and its cultural impact on the human spirit.
Whilst chemical pursuits exalt the understanding, they do not depress the imagination or weaken genuine feelings; whilst they give the mind habits of accuracy, by obliging it to attend to facts, they like wise extend its analogies; and, though conversant with the minute forms of things, they have for their ultimate end the great and magnificent objects of Nature… . And hence they are wonderfully suited to the progressive nature of the human intellect … It may be said of modern chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge, and its objects truth and utility. (Davy, Consolations in Travel in vol. 9 of Works [hereafter Consolations], pp. 361–2, 365)

Davy claimed chemistry as the crown of a “liberal education,” and assumed that a serious chemist would begin with an elementary knowledge of mathematics, general physics, languages, natural history, and literature. It is interesting that he included Latin, Greek, and French. He should write up his experiments in “the simplest style and manner.” But above all his imagination “must be active and brilliant in seeking analogies (Davy, Consolations, pp. 364–6)”.

Davy was not above adding a little perilous glamour to the pursuit. “The business of the laboratory is often a service of danger, and the elements, like the refractory spirits of romance, though the obedient slave of the Magician, yet sometimes escape the influence of his talisman, and endanger his person (Davy, Consolations, pp. 365–6)”.

As a result of Davy's promotion (and self-promotion) chemistry became not only popular but ultra fashionable by the end of the 1820's. There was a boom in the sale of chemistry sets, and books explaining practical experiments to be conducted at home. (The Chemical Heritage Museum in Philadelphia has one of the finest and most extensive collections of these, starting with those of Johann Gottling, 1791, and James Wodehouse, 1797.) There was a vogue for subscribing to courses of chemical lectures, chemical journals, and for joining Chemical clubs, many of which were finally grouped together as the Chemical Society of London in 1824.

Indeed the cult of Chemistry became the object of some mockery. One journalist, William Weedon, had considerable fun at its expense in a little book entitled Popular Explanation of Chemistry, which appeared in 1825.
A Chemical Philosopher was formerly a sort of wizard, a monster rarely to be seen; and then, in his gown and cap, or enshrined in the cloister of the University. It was his dread lest the vulgar understand him; lest, while he pretended to dazzle, and to be great, he should chance to be useful.The contemptible beings are now vanished, and Chemists are running to the opposite extreme. Note only are treatises of Philosophy and Chemistry met with in every quarter, but Beaux and their Ladies, all are now Chemists, or pretend to be so. All are vying with each other in the ardour of experimenting and communication. Monthly, and even weekly Journals are teeming with experiments, and with real or supposed discoveries. (Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain 1760–1820, 1992, p. 255)

But Davy's astonishing “chemical influence” can be traced in many and surprising directions far beyond the fashionable world of London.

Possibly most significant of all, chemistry became a recognised part of children's education, just as astronomy had once been. The children's author Jane Marcet (1769–1858) was directly inspired by Davy to use chemistry as a new basis for enlightened teaching.

From 1802 Marcet records that she began attending Davy's “excellent lectures” delivered at the Royal Institution. “Every fact or experiment” Davy produced, all his “numerous and elegant illustrations,” riveted her attention and lead on to a wider understanding of chemical theory. She grasped the enormous educational value of scientific discussion and demonstration, especially in chemistry. She realized that the format of his lectures could be transferred into “familiar conversations,” which could prepare the mind of young readers (and especially female ones) “for abstract ideas or scientific language (Conversations on Chemistry, vol. 1, pp. vi–vii)”. Thus the first of celebrated Conversations in Science series was born.

Encouraged by her husband Alexander Marcet, himself a Fellow of the Royal Society, she published the first truly best-selling scientific populariser for young people in 1806. Breezily entitled Conversations on Chemistry, in which the elements of that science are familiarly explained and illustrated by Experiments, it eventually sold as many books as the poetry of Lord Byron. Marcet popularised the chemical work of Cavendish, Black, Priestley and Davy on gases and the whole subject of “pneumatic chemistry.” But more than this, she presented chemistry as a new form of education, a course in both logical reasoning and speculative imagination, for “young persons.”

Marcet re-invented the dialogue form as a series of imaginary scientific lessons between a teacher “Mrs B” (possible based on a famous astronomer tutor, Margaret Bryan) and her two young women pupils. Emily is observant and rather serious, while Caroline is mischievous but inventive. (These are all emphasised as valuable qualities for a young scientist.) Caroline continually tempts Mrs B into the more imaginative aspects of science.

While discussing the composition of water, Mrs B points out that oxygen has “greater affinity” for other elements than hydrogen. Caroline instantly grasps the romantic possibilities of this: “Hydrogen, I see, is like nitrogen, a poor dependent friend of oxygen, which is continually forsaken for greater favourites.” Mrs B starts to reply—“The connection or friendship as you choose to call it is much more intimate between oxygen and hydrogen in the state of water”—then sees where this is going, and hastily breaks off: “but this is foreign to our purpose.”

With a suppressed giggle, Caroline has discovered “sexual chemistry,” and the reader will remember forever the composition of a water molecule: two hydrogen atoms in unrequited love with an oxygen atom (H2O). Caroline adds suggestively: “I should extremely [italics added] like to see water decomposed (Conversations on Chemistry, p. 156)”.

Jane Marcet went on to develop the Conversation brand in a whole series of other books on economy, botany, natural philosophy, and other scientific topics of the day. But it was one of the fifteen later editions of Conversations in Chemistry that inspired the great 19th century physicist Michael Faraday FRS to begin his career in science. Faraday started reading the book in 1810, while still working as an apprentice bookbinder, and later recalled: “I felt I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast to it.”

Yet in complete contrast, Davy's chemistry also came to represent a baleful possibility that had been barely conceived before this time. This was the paradoxical idea that science could also represent a menace to mankind, a profound threat to the whole future of society. Thus it was that Davy's lectures and writings also inspired the young novelist Mary Shelley.

The first volume of Shelley's great catastrophe novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) is largely the story of a young student's education in Chemistry. This is based upon several sources (including the experiences of her husband Percy Shelley at Oxford University), but primarily upon Davy's lectures in London. While composing her novel in the winter of 1816–17, Mary Shelley's daily Journal records how she meticulously read and studied Davy's published lectures of 1802 and 1812.

Indeed young Victor Frankenstein is inspired by lectures on the future of chemistry, delivered in the Anatomy Theatre at the University of Ingoldstat by the charismatic Professor Waldman. For these fictional lectures, Mary Shelley drew precisely on the text of Davy's “Discourse Introductory” of 1802 (as quoted above), in which he spoke of those future experiments in which man would “interrogate Nature with Power … as a master, active, with his own instruments.” Like Davy, Professor Waldman states: “Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made. …” Similarly, he expands on the idea of a new science:
The ancient teachers of this science,” said [Waldman], “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of Nature, and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited Powers: they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadow. (Frankenstein, first edition, 1818, chapter 2)

The fictional chemical student Victor Frankenstein is hypnotized by these ideas and conceives his terrible ambition to create a new being.
Such were the Professor's words—rather let me say such the words of the Fate—enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being. Chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, and one purpose. So much has been done!—exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein: more, far more will I achieve! Treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown Powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of Creation. (Frankenstein, revised edition, 1831, chapter 3)

The direct consequence, as everyone knows, was the creation of the most famous fictional “Monster” in history, and perhaps the most influential “demonization” of scientific hubris ever written. This too was part of the Chemical Moment.

Yet finally it is fair to say that Davy's greatest bequest to science was Michael Faraday (1791–1867). Trained and mentored as a chemist by Davy at the Royal Institution, Faraday became the leading experimental scientists of the early 19th century. He was also one of the most inspired popularisers of science as a lecturer. Faraday carried on Davy's chemical work at the Royal Instruction for the next thirty years. He moved into the new discipline of electro-chemistry, investigating the whole area of electro-magnetic fields, and the creation of what was to become the electric generator.

Faraday was a more withdrawn and private figure than Davy, and more of a professional scientist. His publications and lectures were increasingly technical and specialised. Yet Faraday eventually produced one extraordinary work which carried on the great educational and popularising influence of his mentor.

This was his famous lecture series “On the Chemical History of a Candle,” first given in 1848, but the fruit of a lifetime's work. It is in many ways the apogee of the discipline and philosophy of early 19th century chemistry. It was a masterly series of six lectures for young people, designed with unparalleled clarity and brilliance. Faraday explored and explained almost every known chemical feature of life on Earth, from simple combustion to the complex carbon cycle, through the exquisite analysis of a single candle burning. His charm, his simplicity and conviction is well caught in this edited version of his delightful opening:
I purpose to bring before you the Chemical History of a Candle. I have taken this subject on a former occasion; and were it left to my own will, I should prefer to repeat it almost every year.There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play, and is touched upon in these phenomena. There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.And before proceeding, let me say this also—that though our subject be so great, and our intention that of treating it honestly, seriously, and philosophically, yet I mean to pass away from all those who are seniors amongst us. I claim the privilege of speaking to juveniles as a juvenile myself. I have done so on former occasions—and, if you please, I shall do so again. And now, my boys and girls, I must first tell you of what candles are made.

The lectures were eventually published—in lightly edited form—by none other than Charles Dickens in his large-circulation, popular magazine Household Words (1850). It was the final vindication of Davy's vision of the broad, progressive influence of chemistry throughout society. It is true that by this date the cutting edge of science had passed to classical Physics, and the great work of James Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin. Yet the Chemical Moment had been handed on gloriously to the next generation in the shape of a single, radiant candle flame. It is burning brightly still.